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Tube cleaning with RYDLYME

We completed a condenser bundle cleaning yesterday on both of our 350 ton carrier chillers using the RYDLYNE product. The stuff worked great! But…
We started with chiller #2. Upon completion of the cleaning we removed the head on the condenser bundle and inspected the tubes. We found a good bit of copper loss in the head cover well. RYDLYME says it’s not corrosive, eroding or will it attack copper.

We reduce the amount of RYDLYME used in the chiller to 25 gallons and cleaning time to 2 hours. Upon inspection of chiller #1 tubes we found only minute amount or copper in the head cover well.
Not sure if the copper was trapped in the scale from the start or came from another source. We did isolated the bundles.

We used what was recommended by our Rep. I was wondering if anyone else had similar issues using this product. I waiting to hear back from RYDYNE, we send them the copper samples and waiting to hear back from them.

Spoke to the manufacture of RYDLYME. They said it is not unusual to see copper loss when you remove the heads after a cleaning, they called it copper plating. He said there should not be any loss of copper off of the tube surface. Did eddy current in 2010 everything was fine, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to run another just to be safe.

I think what you're seeing is called electrolytic plating. I'm no chemist so I can't explain what's happening where it can be understood, but I've seen the same thing. It would take a goodly amount of time to do any serious damage even using inhibited acid, so the Rylyme shouldn't have created any issues. Were the tubes even scaled? A 350TR machine would normally take around 50 to 60 gallons of Rydlyme for a minimum circulating time of 6 hours for moderately scaled tubes. If you cleaned them in 2 hours with half the chemical, it would surprise me if there was anything there to clean to start with. Did you look at them first and determine their condition?

I think what you're seeing is called electrolytic plating. I'm no chemist so I can't explain what's happening where it can be understood, but I've seen the same thing. It would take a goodly amount of time to do any serious damage even using inhibited acid, so the Rylyme shouldn't have created any issues. Were the tubes even scaled? A 350TR machine would normally take around 50 to 60 gallons of Rydlyme for a minimum circulating time of 6 hours for moderately scaled tubes. If you cleaned them in 2 hours with half the chemical, it would surprise me if there was anything there to clean to start with. Did you look at them first and determine their condition?

yes there was some light scaling not enough to affect approaches. But enough for us to be proactive. First time we used this so i didn't know what to expect.

Acidizing is a last resort, but when it is needed we have found a product marketed by Garrett-Calahan in a powdered form. I beleive it is called sufamic acid. It is safer to use for the machine and the person doing the application. It is more expensive than any thing else we've used but is worth it.

Hard scale may not be a uniform thickness the full length of the tubes. Heavier toward the piping end on a two pass. Our chemical guy is testing constantly during the cleaning process. When copper begins to show up cleaning is halted. Years ago we hung a piece of iron in the acid tank and when it began showing copper plating we stopped. I would not use acid as a proactive measure if the approach was normal. Softened water and/or chemicals will remove light scale over time. If water quality is monitored daily scale should not be a problem.

RYLIME is a good product ,if you use sulfamic acid just keep in mind monitoring PH and once finish the acid clean, neutralize with high PH .
also citric acid is very good for perfom the fouling remove.
but Rylime is good only follow the instructions and take or the PH of the solution.

I did a 500 ton Carrier 19XL several years ago with Rydlyme. The tubes were extremely scaled, and 25-30% of the tubes were totally blocked with scale and mud that had hardened around chunks of tower fill. Rydlyme made them look as good as new and at the end of the day, there were only like 2 or 3 tubes that I couldn't get through with a brush. The tubes were very bright at the end of the cleaning, but an eddy current showed no significant damage.

i've used rydlyme for years and know exactly what you are talking about. i've had tubes that are so bad i've had to drill them. once the tubes have flow I run the rydlyme for two hours, always bright and clean. I have never had to run it longer then that. if I had to drill them I always get them tested and have never had a problem.